Masters of Italian Horror

From Variety:
Looking to revive the Italian slasher genre dear to Quentin Tarantino, state film entity Istituto Luce will co-produce and release locally an ultraviolent pic package including new works by cult vets Lamberto Bava, Umberto Lenzi and Sergio Martino.

Unveiled to journos in Rome's skull-filled wax museum, the four-pic Masters of Italian Horror package is co-produced by Luce with Luciano Martino's Dania Film and the Turin Film Commission. Luce is seeking an international sales company for the slashers, which are to be completed by June 2007.

Though inspired by Showtime's Masters of Horror series, new Italo slasher slate has no links with the Showtime web. Package instead marks a rare case of Italo product for which financing from local broadcasters has purposely not been sought.

Low-budget pics will be shot digitally in Piedmont, at the foot of the Italo Alps.

"For once we won't be slaves to the sugar-coated tastes of TV audiences," said Lenzi.

Lenzi's credits include 1969 thriller "Orgasmo" (aka "Paranoia") featured in Venice fest retrospective "The Secret History of Italian Cinema." The 2004 retro, tubthumped by Tarantino -- who often credits Italo B-movies as inspiration -- has been instrumental in drawing attention to the Italo slasher genre, which was highly lucrative in the 1960s, '70s and '80s, before Silvio Berlusconi's Mediaset ushered in Italo commercial TV.